Okay, before some pettifogging comment-lawyer jumps on me, criminality is not perfectly inverse to IQ: there is an IQ threshold below which individuals are too disabled even for a career of violent crime.

But had I delayed to write just as I did in a peremptory tone, some old pettifogging, gossiping, soapsuds might in the interim have taken a delight in wounding your feelings by telling you that your committee folks meant to change their schoolmaster — I was determined that you should have the chance of resigning before you could hear it. —